Values, not one step, made Neil Armstrong hero

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Updated 1:41 pm, Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Armstrong (left, with Apollo 11 crewmates Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin) died Saturday at age 82. Armstrong became an educator after he retired from NASA.

Armstrong (left, with Apollo 11 crewmates Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin) died Saturday at age 82. Armstrong became an educator after he retired from NASA.

Photo: Associated Press

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Neil Armstrong takes his "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" in 1969.

Neil Armstrong takes his "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" in 1969.

Photo: Stan Creighton, The Chronicle

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Apollo 11 space mission US astronaut Neil Armstrong is seen smiling at the camera aboard the lunar module "Eagle" on July 21, 1969 after spending more than 2½ hours on the lunar surface. US astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were the first men in history to set foot on the moon's surface. After about seven hours of rest aboard "Eagle", they were awakened by Houston to prepare for the return flight and rejoin Michael Collins aboard "Columbia" in lunar orbit. Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the moon, has died, US media reported on August 22, 2012. He was 82. Armstrong underwent cardiac bypass surgery, earlier this month after doctors found blockages in his coronary arteries. He and fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, before the eyes of hundreds of millions of awed television viewers worldwide. = RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / NASA" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS =-/AFP/GettyImages

Apollo 11 space mission US astronaut Neil Armstrong is seen smiling at the camera aboard the lunar module "Eagle" on July 21, 1969 after spending more than 2½ hours on the lunar surface. US astronauts Buzz

Visitors to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC on 27 August 2012 examine the Apollo 11 capsule that took Neil Armstrong and two fellow US astronauts to the Moon in July 1969. President Barack Obama has ordered all official US flags to be lowered to half mast in memory of Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, who died August 25, 2012 at the age of 82. AFP PHOTO / ROBERT MacPHERSONRobert MacPherson/AFP/GettyImages

Visitors to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC on 27 August 2012 examine the Apollo 11 capsule that took Neil Armstrong and two fellow US astronauts to the Moon in July 1969.

The news of Neil Armstrong's death popped up on my computer screen on Saturday and, in an instant, it was July 20, 1969, and I was walking into my dorm at UC Riverside, past the student lounge, where everyone was grouped around a television set, watching the grainy images of a person setting foot on the moon for the first time.

I don't know where I'd been that day - probably at the beach in Malibu, where I'd escape to every day in the ugly battleship-gray Chevelle my dad had bought me. I had chosen that car in an attempt to counter his impression of me as the family whack job, only to curse myself for years with the reminder of how much the ruse didn't work every time I climbed into that singularly dull car.

I had known the moon landing was imminent, of course - it was impossible not to know about it that summer - just as, only a couple of weeks later, it was impossible not to know about the Manson family murders.

But I was a kid, still adhering to a me-centered view of the world. I was off on my own for the first time that summer, 3,000 miles away from home, going to class every morning. I'd arranged all my classes in the morning so I could drive across L.A. to Malibu at noon. I didn't want to be a teacher, necessarily, but didn't know what else to do. Mostly, I thought it would be cool to be in California.

Coming in from the beach that day, I stopped, for just a few minutes, to watch Armstrong's foot sink into the ashy dust and to hear him say the words no one will ever forget. I remember watching his foot descend and thinking I could almost hear the sound it made.

Years later, I remembered that moment, and not just because of its incalculable historic importance to the whole world. In those few minutes, standing apart from the rest of my dorm mates and watching what was happening on TV, my youthful narcissism was nudged a bit on its axis. I didn't know it then, but I'd begun to edge toward an adult's understanding that the world was bigger than my insistent self-focus.

Learning of Armstrong's death on Saturday, I went first to TV, which, as usual, was unprepared to report breaking news with any kind of depth or perspective. Tropical Storm Isaac was still the top story on most cable news channels, while Armstrong's death was reported, and the family's statement excerpted, against a still photograph of the former astronaut in later years. It would take a while for the cable channels to even find the landing footage from 1969, a piece of film as ubiquitous and generation-defining as the Zapruder film from Dallas in 1963.

Another Armstrong

Logging on to my remote desktop at The Chronicle and going to the electronic wire basket, the first story I saw was headlined ARMSTRONG-DOPING. I was taken aback for a split second, until of course I remembered that there was another Armstrong making news this weekend.

In time, cable news caught up with the death of Neil Armstrong, invariably described by friends like John Glenn as an intensely private man who nonetheless never lost his devotion to the space program. There were clips of Armstrong speaking in later years, at events such as the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. He was quietly eloquent, sincerely humble and true. He sounded like the educator he became after he retired from NASA.

But I was most struck by another film clip of Armstrong putting his historic mission into perspective against the whole of his own life. In so doing, he reminded us of what should really count. While always proud of being the first man on the moon, Armstrong offered that, in the end, the measure of a person's life is the complete ledger, not just any one particular accomplishment or highlight.

I couldn't help thinking about the obvious differences in the stories of two Armstrongs in the news on Saturday.

Real champions

But it wasn't until the afternoon that something else seemed to further refract those stories: the record-setting U.S. championship game between Petaluma and Tennessee in the Little League World Series.

Everyone knows the Northern California kids played their hearts out, that they defied the odds every step of the way to get to that all-important game on Saturday. And everyone knows they were being roundly trounced by their rivals, until scoring 10 runs on eight hits to force the game into extra innings.

The final score wasn't the story, though. The real story was told by the kids themselves. If you were watching on Saturday afternoon, you saw their hope, drive and determination. And when it was over, you also saw the faces and heard the voices of real champions.

It wasn't just that they were gracious in defeat, as the old saying goes: You knew they meant every complimentary word directed at the players who had just beaten them. These kids have values. They believe in themselves and in baseball. They believe in possibility and hope. They know that true champions don't need to fake it and true champions don't need to cheat. They seem to know that winning is great, but playing well is what sustains you, in baseball and in life.

We use the word hero so often that we probably don't stop to think of what it really means. Is it someone who does an extraordinary deed or several extraordinary deeds?

A firefighter saves a child from a burning building and the act is deemed heroic. But when the child has been saved and the fire extinguished, the firefighter's life continues as any life does, with its share of accomplishments, wins, losses, sadness and joy, defeats and disappointments. He deals with all eventualities as an ordinary man, in his own way. His responses don't make headlines, but in the long run, how he responds defines who he is.

If he is a true hero, he works every day to live up to principles. He believes not just in saving a child from a burning building but also in living by a code of right and wrong, of treating others with respect and dignity, of living a kind life. And if each day, the assets column of his life's ledger grows a little longer, then he is a real hero.

Neil Armstrong was an American hero not because he set foot on the moon but because, by all accounts, he was a man with values and he tried to live by them every day. When he died on Saturday morning, it is safe to say his ledger was full. I suspect if he'd never set foot on the surface of the moon, that ledger would be still be full. We know about him because of the moon landing, but Neil Armstrong was a hero before and after that midsummer's day and the step he took 240,000 miles away.

Cutting corners

I don't know whether the other Armstrong took performance-enhancing drugs or not. Like many, I suspect he did because it seems that if you are wrongly accused of something that big, getting on with your life, as Armstrong put it when announcing he would abandon his defense against doping charges, would mean fighting to the last minute of your existence to prove your accusers wrong.

In the last two weeks, Bay Area baseball fans have been saddened to learn that two of its baseball heroes had been suspended for juicing, Melky Cabrera and Bartolo Colon. Every time a major-league player gets caught using steroids, you can count on someone to ask rhetorically what it might mean to all the Little League players who look to major-leaguers as heroes. Yeah, it's a cliche, but on Saturday when you looked at the faces of the Petaluma champions - because, yes, they are champions, every one of them - you saw belief, confidence, trust and the kind of excitement that can only be generated by players who don't cut corners.

In the years ahead, as the boys become young men, there will be other opponents on other fields to test them and there will always be opportunities to cheat or to fake it in life. That's just the way of the world.

But if they look to real heroes as examples, to men and women who are champions in their own lives, regardless of whether they are unsung or celebrated, the Petaluma kids have a good chance of being all-stars in the long run too.

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